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95% of paywalls (including that one) can be bypassed with noscript, private window or clearing cookies.

That article is... lol, and in a good way. Not what Bruce meant to link to, I suspect

Iran’s most notorious dissident group loves luring gullible U.S. officials and journalists into seeing a bomb factory beneath every building in Tehran. Dig a little deeper, sheeple.

That is literally the lead, I'm not making that up, honestly. To be fair, digging deeper involves sophisticated techniques not available to most journos like, well, google searches, google earth, making phone calls etc instead of just repeating the good oil some dude in the pentagon gave you and waiting for your resultant pulitzer to arrive.

Syrian nuclear centrifuges:

This was like old times for Krüger and me. He helped me debunk another suspected centrifuge plant back in 2011, when “officials” leaked information to the Associated Press suggesting that the IAEA suspected that Syria had an enrichment facility on the outskirts of Hasakah — one that was identical to plans for a centrifuge facility found in Libya, right down to the toilets.

Within a few days, however, I was able to determine that the site was actually a textile factory constructed by East Germany in the early 1980s. Both old satellite images and the Syrian company’s website helped establish its purpose. Krüger then actually tracked down the chief East German engineer and scored an interview. The facility was not a copy of a Libyan centrifuge facility. The Libyan facility, on the other hand, might have been disguised as an East German-built textile factory, many examples of which can be found in the Middle East. One wonders if it was designed by German business partners of Pakistan’s Dr. A. Q. Khan. My colleague Tamara Patton built a pretty cool 3-D model of the site, if you are interested.

Iranian centrifuge site:

My colleague Paul-Anton Krüger, who writes for the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, and I contacted this person. His story checks out. Iran makes identification cards at the site. It also has a steady stream of foreign visitors. None of his colleagues saw anything out of the ordinary.

In addition to foreign firms working with Matiran, at least two international delegations have also visited the facility. Iran organized an October 2011 site visit by a delegation of National Civil Registration Organizations as part of a conference held in Tehran. Iran organized a second site visit, in April 2013, as part of a similar meeting. So there you have it: NCRI “found” a secret site producing identification cards that has been visited repeatedly by foreigners.

Somehow, not a single newspaper tried to contact any of these people. Carol Morello at the Washington Post wrote that NCRI’s claims “could not be independently verified.” Yeah, not unless you have a computer and an Internet connection.

DPRK 'nuclear site'

That wasn’t, strictly speaking, true. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) thought Kumchang-ri might house a secret nuclear reactor. The rest were more skeptical. Jack Pritchard was an intelligence analyst at time. “Everybody threw up their hands and said we don’t know what it is, but we don’t have a better explanation,’’ he would later tell Dan Sneider of the San Jose Mercury News. The DIA couldn’t win consensus for its view within the government, so someone decided to appeal though the press. The U.S. intelligence community might not have collectively agreed that Kumchang-ri was an underground nuclear reactor, but that no longer mattered after the New York Times said otherwise. The Clinton administration was forced to negotiate access for a team of inspectors to the site, at considerable expense to U.S. taxpayers.

When the inspectors arrived, they could not determine the purpose of the site, but concluded that Kumchang-ri, laid out as a grid of tunnels, was “unsuitable” for a nuclear reactor and “not well designed” for a reprocessing facility..

Not a bad reference for the next time someone tells me that leaks from 'unnamed official' are 100% accurate, ta Bruce.

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I thought we were already out of Iraq? Actually, the Iraqi government said they didn't want us there anymore, so, aside from whatever support people there to help out with things, we don't have any combat troops in Iraq.

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I thought we were already out of Iraq? Actually, the Iraqi government said they didn't want us there anymore, so, aside from whatever support people there to help out with things, we don't have any combat troops in Iraq.

There is still some thousand US troops (official number is ~5000 I think) there because of the intervention against ISIS which started in 2014, even thought USA's military actions mostly consisted of airstrikes they still performed some land missions, like assasinations and rescue operations. Although in Febuary of this year it was again annunced that US will start to reduce number of troops in Iraq.

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It's also a six month old article reinvigorated now because Donny took a dumpikins on international relations again so some PR firm wants a way to slander everyone who disagrees with him.

The Politico article it's based on reads like a tin foil conspiracy where everyone except the US and a couple of its client states is involved in the scheme from the usual rogue gallery to Europe and Africa and the author is outraged! outraged! that anyone might have a foreign policy independent of the US or that Iran and Lebanon had the sheer temerity to place their countries near US bases.

It's exactly the sort of article that makes me want to reach through my monitor and give the author an atomic wedgie for his troubles, and for wasting my time reading that overly long load of tosh and old cobblers; starting from the conclusion and working back from it is exactly the sort of approach which got US soldiers blown up in Iraq in the first place Mr Meyer. The NYP article on in contrast is at least brief and doesn't repeat itself a dozen times even though it's been Murdoched, as expected.

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Early Iraqi election results don't look good for the US either- Moqtada al Sadr leading and the head of the PMU Al Ameri and Abadi fighting over second.

Probably not as good for Iran as they might have hoped though, Sadr still holds a grudge for them over not supporting him vs the US, though the PMU leader is pretty proxy like. Still, the grudge Sadr holds against Iran is nothing compared to the one he holds against the US even a decade+ after the Mehdi Army, and Al Ameri doing well is even worse since he's the closest to a direct Iranian proxy in the race. Sad for Abadi if he doesn't make it, he managed the juggling act better than anyone else has since Saddam (who'd just shoot anyone who noticed if he dropped any balls) and probably ought to be regarded as a near Churchillian* figure right down to potentially losing an election after winning the war.

That's one thing the democrats and republicans have in common. They both love going to war.

To quote US Army Gen John Buford "There is something about mayors, politicians, and dignitaries that troubles me. They're too fat, talk too much, and they never think twice about asking someone to die for them."

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Get off my lawn!

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That's one thing the democrats and republicans have in common. They both love going to war.

To quote US Army Gen John Buford "There is something about mayors, politicians, and dignitaries that troubles me. They're too fat, talk too much, and they never think twice about asking someone to die for them."

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Yeah, Iran is twice the size of Iraq, we're already spread thin as it is, and unlike Iraq, Iran has a military that is actually competent.

I could see maybe occupying strategic places like the Strait of Hormuz, but a full on invasion? no. Also, I bet Bolton hasn't even considered the strategic/tactical reasons and goals for invasion or considered the post-invasion. He sounds a lot like Bush 43.

Realistically if the US were to invade Iran, I mean really invade like Normandy or Inchon not some half measure that is done lately, the outcome is not in doubt. The Iranians will mount a fairly effective resistance I have no doubt. But by no means could they hope to defeat the invasion. A US victory is a foregone conclusion. But it will be costly for both sides. Thousands of US troops, hundreds of thousands of Iranians, most of whom will be citizens who never have or would harm anyone. And the end result will be another hostile, occupied, and ruined country with a never ending insurrection and a middle east even further destabilized.

Since none of that sounds appealing I'd say we take the route that leaves hundreds of thousands of people not dead.

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The US should just continue it's academic brain drain on the region if it really cares about winning in the long run.

Short of a war, an executive military campaign is still going to be an awful road to head down.

I can't wait until the entire middle eastern region is sucked dry of all it's oil, and the oil wealth has been invested in sustained service industries. Then finally the region can experience an at will shift to a humanitarian-modernity without the liberal hawks trying to pull the region up on a pedestal or the fear monger conservatives trying to keep everyone a pedestal they think is cramped enough.